Isabel Giovanni (isabel_giovanni) wrote in voicesinmyhead, @ 2008-02-29 18:41:00 |
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Current mood: | contemplative |
Entry tags: | isabel giovanni, prompt #31 |
31. What have you done that you wish you could apologize for?
It isn't what I've done, it's what I didn't do. I should have known better and acted as an elder and not as if I was watching a laboratory rat navigating a maze.
[Private]
I wish I could apologise to Chas.
Charles Giovanni Tello, to give his proper name. He was young, in experience in the family and of the thirteenth generation, and from the New World branch of the family. He wasn't strong enough to rein in his Beast. Instead of being a mentor, fully a mentor, to him, I watched his slide into inhumanity with the cold, critical eye of a scientist. I wanted to use him, to unleash him fully upon the enemies of the family in Boston when our negotiations began to fail (it is never if negotiations fail, it is invariably always when if the Sabbat are involved).
God, how twisted it all became. How the world survived 1999 is still a mystery; and no, I am not speaking about the superstitious Y2K nonsense the blood bags mortals were spouting. I am speaking of the Camarilla-Sabbat war for the eastern seaboard of the British new world colonies United States of America.
Chas was sent to investigate the kidnapping of Benito Giovanni. I had been sent to negotiate the continued neutrality of the Giovanni in Boston and to underscore that the city would always be controlled by our factions. Simple, no? No. The two events, though seemingly disparate, were intertwined and I soon found myself searching for Benito as well. Why? Because some demented old clan members had decided to come out of the Shadowlands and toss their lot in with the bastards in the Sabbat. It was thought that Benito was a victim of these 'Harbingers of Skulls' who were systematically hunting down the Giovanni who participated in the Cappadocian purge. For once I was glad to have been too young to participate in that bit of family business.
So, our paths were intertwined and eventually I found one of these demented ones living outside of New Orleans. All the while, Chas was deteriorating and becoming more and more unsteady as the Beast began to claim his mind. I did counsel some patience and tried to teach him how to keep the Beast on a tether, but he was too young. I should have sent him back to Boston when I learnt of the Harbinger's lair; or at least insisted that he remain in New Orleans to report on any failure on my part. Even with his Beast so strong, I could have dominated him into obeying.
I didn't.
Who knows. Perhaps I had grown to enjoy his brash New York attitude, or simply his company. On black days, I suspect that it was simply that I feared to be going to my potential Final Death all alone.
I did not meet my Final Death that night, but Chas did. He was so far gone, the Beast so ever- present, that he challenged the Methuselah and was reduced to ash in the blink of an eye. I lost a companion and gained only riddles.
But we now know with certainty, there are Cappadocians still walking the night.
I will find them. I will purge them. I will erase them from God's creation.
It's personal, you see.